The older text on this page ended by promising a few more foods that help you lose weight, but it never listed them, and nothing in it was tested. This version takes a narrower route. Each of the five foods below was put into a trial as a swap: one food in place of another, with everything else kept as close to the same as the researchers could manage. Some swaps cut the calories people ate. One changed how full people felt and nothing else. Dates were not part of any of them, and the last section explains where they fit.
1. Mushrooms in place of beef
At Johns Hopkins, adults of normal weight, overweight and obesity each ate eight test lunches in the lab over two weeks (PubMed 18221822). Four lunches in a row were made with beef and four with white button mushrooms, in random order. The portions were the same size, but the beef lunch held 783 kcal against 339 kcal for the mushroom one.
People ate 730 kcal at the beef lunches and 310 kcal at the mushroom lunches. Over the four days they compensated for only about 11% of that difference, so their total daily energy and fat intake stayed higher on the beef days. Ratings of how pleasant the lunches were, and of appetite and fullness, did not differ significantly.
A follow-up trial from the same university ran for a year with 73 adults with obesity, 64 women and 9 men, all on a standard weight loss and maintenance programme (PubMed 24056209). One group swapped mushrooms for red meat. Compared with the group on the standard diet, the mushroom group reported a lower energy intake, a mean of 123 kcal less a day, and lost more weight, a figure the abstract gives as 7.03 lb, or 3.6% of body weight. Those who finished the full 12 months still weighed a mean of 7 lb less than when they started. Intake was measured with 7-day food records. USDA FoodData Central lists raw white mushrooms at 22 kcal per 100g.
2. Wholegrain rye in place of refined wheat
In Copenhagen, 70 adults with overweight or obesity replaced their usual cereal foods for six weeks with refined wheat, wholegrain wheat or wholegrain rye, eaten freely (PubMed 28327566). Body weight fell by 1.06kg in the rye group and rose by 0.15kg in the refined wheat group. The rye group took in about 200 kcal less from the study products than the refined wheat group, yet their total energy intake did not differ.
A larger Swedish trial, called RyeWeight, put 242 adults aged 30 to 70 on a reduced-calorie diet for 12 weeks with either high-fibre rye products or refined wheat products (PubMed 34620312). The rye group lost 1.08kg more weight and 0.54% more body fat. The authors could not link the difference to appetite. Both papers share an author who founded the Nordic Rye Forum, which the RyeWeight paper says is funded by industry partners.
3. Cod in place of no seafood
An Icelandic trial gave 126 adults aged 20 to 40 an eight-week diet cut by 30% in energy (PubMed 19356912). All three groups had the same mix of protein, fat and carbohydrate. One group had no seafood, one had 150g of cod three times a week and one had 150g of cod five times a week.
The whole group lost 5.0kg on average. Those eating cod five times a week lost 1.7kg more than the group with no seafood, and the more cod people ate, the more weight they lost. FoodData Central lists cooked Atlantic cod at 105 kcal per 100g, with 22.8g of protein.
4. Puréed vegetables hidden in the main dish
Penn State researchers fed 20 men and 21 women breakfast, lunch and dinner in the lab once a week for three weeks (PubMed 21289225). On two of those days, larger amounts of puréed vegetables were mixed into the main dishes without the diners being told (the abstract gives 3 or 4.5 times the amount), so each dish carried 85% or 75% of its normal calories per gram. Side dishes stayed the same.
People ate about the same weight of food every day. That meant 202 kcal less on the 85% day and 357 kcal less on the 75% day. On the 75% day, vegetable intake went up from 270g on the standard day to 487g. Hunger and fullness ratings did not differ, and the dishes were rated as just as tasty. Each test lasted a day, so weight was not measured.
5. Lentils in place of rice or wheat
This is the swap that did less than hoped. At the University of Guelph, two crossover studies of 24 healthy adults each replaced rice in a chili, or wheat in a muffin, with green or red lentils (PubMed 31152672). Green lentil chili raised fullness ratings by 17.5% compared with rice chili. Red lentil chili did not, and neither changed how much people ate at the test meal or across 24 hours. The lentil muffins made no difference to anything measured.
So feeling fuller did not turn into eating less here. On paper the gap is small too: FoodData Central lists boiled lentils at 116 kcal per 100g and cooked white long-grain rice at 130 kcal, though the lentils carry 7.9g of fibre against 0.4g.
Where dates fit
None of these five trials used dates, so they say nothing about dates and weight. The numbers are useful for planning, though. FoodData Central lists Medjool dates at 277 kcal per 100g, with 66.5g of sugars and 6.7g of fibre. That is more than twelve times the energy of the mushrooms above, so dates could not play the low-calorie part in swaps like these.
The NHS counts a 30g portion of dried fruit, dates included, as 1 of your 5 A Day, and says to eat it at mealtimes, not as a snack between meals, to reduce the impact on teeth. For Medjool, 30g comes to about 83 kcal. Kept to that portion and eaten with a meal, dates sit inside that advice.
Buying dates from Pengedar Kurma Malaysia
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This article is general information, not personal advice. If you plan a big change to the way you eat, speak to your GP or a dietitian first.